Stop giving Wikipedia money

http://newslines.org/blog/stop-giving-wikipedia-money/

by sparkzilla • 12 years ago

21 18 12 years ago

newslines.org

PhantomGremlin2• 12 years ago

This is a quick read. It's a screed about Wikipedia periodically begging for money. Good food for thought.

gohrt• 12 years ago

And written by a self-styled competitor.

dalke3• 12 years ago

Others have written similar things, like http://wikipediocracy.com/2014/09/21/wikipedia-keeping-it-fr... .

D_Alex• 12 years ago

No, I will not stop. The amount of value I receive from Wikipedia directly is hundreds of dollars a year (subjectively of course). And I suspect the value I receive indirectly, through better access to information for the current and future engineers, doctors, scientists etc is many times greater.

shutupalready• 12 years ago

So you're bellyaching about Wikipedia having $51 million in the bank and spending $684,000 on furniture (if true)?

Don't you realize how tiny those numbers are compared to the incredibly wasteful spending by any governmental agency at any level of government, or by any organization or company with monopoly status, or hell, just any really large company?

For something I use every single day for free (unless I choose to contribute), I think Wikipedia is astonishingly great value.

I think it would be great value even if it had the budget of, say, the US Department of Labor ($13 billion -- billion with a "B").

Why do you pick on Wikipedia when there are things 250 times worse?

sparkzilla3• 12 years ago

I am "bellyaching" about the call for donations when none are needed, and those that have been given in the past have not been used appropriately. I am also against government waste.

xnull2guest• 12 years ago

Let's go through his line-by-line line-by-line:

> DEAR WIKIPEDIA READERS: This week we ask our readers to help us. To protect our independence, we’ll never run ads.
What is the point of a site saying they don’t want to show ads, then covering up 50% of the screen with a request for money? No serious for-profit site would consider giving up 50% of the page to an ad. It’s insane. At least this year’s fundraising banners don’t have Jimmy Wales staring out at the reader like Big Brother. Now I respect Wikipedia’s non-ad stance. They can’t very well make money on a site that was created through the free labor of its contributors, but for God’s sake show some decorum.

The substantive objection here is that ads are annoying because they take screen real estate and Wikipedia's drive for donations is annoying because it also takes real estate. He draws an absurdity here from a false equivalence, however - ads are something much more insidious. Ads would track what you are reading on Wikipedia (the modern version of a library) and build a profile of what subjects you are interested in. They would send this data to third parties and those third parties would have the right to sell this data at their discretion. Furthermore ads would run continuously year round. The donation banner is not equivalent to ads, and can not be snubbed for taking up screen real estate because its somehow contradictory to the value position of not running ads.

> We survive on donations averaging about $15. Now is the time we ask. If everyone reading this right now gave $3, our fundraiser would be done within an hour.
Money is not an issue of survival for Wikipedia. According to its latest annual report, The Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), the charity that controls Wikipedia, has $51 million in cash reserves ($28 million) and investments ($23 million). No-one can seriously claim that an organization that has $51 million in the bank is in “survival” mode.

Now for some numbers. Wikipedia alone costs several million dollars (~45 million) a year to run (it has been increasing each year as it is getting more traffic; also remember that servers and storage fail and that architectural changes like switching to ElasticSearch serve the world better).

This breaks down into roughly $20m for salaries and wages (~93k on average, does seem high). $13m operating expenses. $5.7m in awards and grants. $2.5m in web hosting and the same in depreciation of capital investments. $2m for travel and conferences (they do these globally, single events can cost an individual $10k or more, so this seems reasonable IMO). $150k for special events.

I don't need to spell it out but $51m can only afford one year of operating costs. Even if you cut the salary number in half and drop the conferences the author seems to hate, we're still not to two years.

> Yep, that’s about the price of buying a programmer a coffee.
Note the focus on programmers. But programmers don’t make Wikipedia. Wikipedia’s core software is essentially unchanged since 2001 when the project started. Since then Wikipedia’s programming efforts have been a disaster. The Visual Editor (a tool that would allow WYSIWYG editing) was a failure. Editors still edit using tags and arcane code to create their edits. The recently introduced Media Viewer is universally hated. The people who really make Wikipedia are the unpaid volunteers, but hey get nothing from donations. Nothing, while programmers who don’t have a clue get paid. Is that really where your money should go?

The author reads a lot into the sentence, which I took to mean 'cost of a cup of coffee'. Agreed that programmers are just one role at TWF, but why the ire? Furthermore it's fundamentally untrue what he says about Wikipedia being essentially the same since 2002. This is true on the client side but not on the server side. The transition to ElasticSearch as one example.

> We’re a small non-profit
This is a flat-out lie. The WMF is not a small non-profit. It raised $46 million in donations last year and has 215 staff, over 130 of whom work in the Engineering and Product Development department. Yet all of the money spent on programmer salaries has produced no measurable change to the site’s quality. These programmers take up a huge amount of the foundation’s $20 million spent on salaries, salary payments that rose $4 million since 2103.
The closest WMF gets to creating content is the almost $6 million was spent last year on awards and grants — mostly funding international and regional staff and workshops to celebrate Wikipedia, such as Wikimania. These grants have been described as “corrupt” by the WMF’s ex-director Sue Gardner. who said, “I believe the FDC [Funds Dissemination Committee] process, dominated by fund-seekers, does not as currently constructed offer sufficient protection against log-rolling, self-dealing, and other corrupt practices.” Oh dear.

I wholeheartedly agree that TWF is no longer a small nonprofit and has entered the range of medium sized. As for the Wikimania mention and the accusation of corruptness - I don't see that as relevant to the small non-profit claim but merely chosen because there wasn't much else for the author to say. I do not know much about Wikimania or associated corruptness, so I will refrain from commenting on that. I would think that if indeed donations are being spent in a corrupt self-serving way this would be a reason to scale back or refrain for donating to TWF.

> with costs of a top website: servers, staff and programs.
The same KPMG report says that Wikipedia spent $2.5 million of its budget on hosting, almost unchanged since 2013. A closer look at the reports line items shows that the WMF spent almost $684,000 on furniture. That’s almost $3200 per employee. Your donations are going to golden chairs.

Furniture for the past 5 years: 45k, 200k, 200k, 400k, 600k (this year).

Maybe there's another reasonable explanation (outside golden chairs?) Is Wikipedia furnishing a new office? Anyone who has worked on something like that will know how expensive even simple things (like carpeting) are.

Here is a link to the report.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/b/bf/Audit...

The selective use of quotation of figures and partial sharing of information reads more like an indictment than a thesis. Please, if you are considering not donating to Wikipedia look at the finances and find the rest of Wikipedia's expenses (some shared above).

> Wikipedia is something special. It is like a library or a public park where we can all go to think and learn.
I guess parks and libraries would be a lot less popular if you had panhandlers at the doors. Especially panhandlers who have more in the bank than you.

Given that Wikipedia can survive approximately one year without donations, is it really fair to call them a panhandler?

No, it's more like paying taxes with public money to keep a public space open.

Oh wait...

> If Wikipedia is useful to you, take one minute to keep it online and ad-free another year. Thank you.
More weasel words. Wikipedia is already useful without the extra donations, and even if donations stopped tomorrow it would still be able to stay online, continue on cash reserves for years (with some salary cuts).

Covered before. If they cut all salary and all travel and all conferences and all awards they would last at most two years.

No weasel words there.

It turns out it does take millions of dollars to run an operation as large and as often visited as Wikipedia.

sparkzilla3• 12 years ago

Way to miss the point.

I don't need to spell it out but $51m can only afford one year of operating costs.

False.

If they cut all salary and all travel and all conferences they would last at most two years.

False. Salaries alone are $20 million. Awards are $6 million. $2 million for conferences.

It turns out it does take millions of dollars to run an operation as large and as often visited as Wikipedia.

It doesn't. The cost of hosting has remained steady over the past few years at $2.5million, despite traffic rising. The vast majority of the increase of the use of funds is for staff, most of whom do not contribute to the content or product in any meaningful way.

Maybe there's another reasonable explanation (outside golden chairs?)

I'd like to hear it.

not_kurt_godel2• 12 years ago

The cost of hosting has remained steady over the past few years at $2.5million, despite traffic rising. The vast majority of the increase of the use of funds is for staff, most of whom do not contribute to the content or product in any meaningful way.

Do you understand how insanely difficult it is to operate a website at Wikipedia's scale, which has increased exponentially over time? The cost of hosting is negligible compared to the engineering effort needed to design & maintain systems that keep things functional. Here's a quick summary from their blog on the types of things they work on in a given month: https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/10/18/engineering-report-aug... . If you think Wikipedia is just a simple deployment of MediaWiki sitting on a few DO instances, you are sorely mistaken.

spitcode• 12 years ago

You article really had me going until that end part where you shamelessly tried to sell yourself, its not that what you wrote about does not have merit, its just the end part felt like the whole thing is just a ploy to promote yourself

ericnolte• 12 years ago

215 employess x Avg tech-based salary ( $85,000) = 18, 275, 000 / yr. Add the 6, 000, 000 to awards and grants and the 2, 500, 000 in server hosting (which seems awfully slim) = 26, 775, 000 / yr. Their cash reserves just barely cover a year of operating costs at LAST year's expenses. If they wish to continue expanding their reach year over year, as any well minded business should, their yearly expenses from just these 3 items would most likely eclipse their cash reserves within the one year period. Zero cash reserves would halt all investments, meaning their current state wouldn't cover two years of these three liabilities without donations. So, now what?

sparkzilla3• 12 years ago

Wikipedia doesn't need the money. Here's what a WMF insider has to say: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2014-Decem...

Every year we get promises that they'll work on making the banners better. However, it seems when they say better, they mean more effective from the perspective of generating revenue. The message from the fundraising staff and Lila is more of the same.

This year I've started having people I know worry that Wikipedia is in financial trouble. It makes me feel ashamed when I have to tell them Wikipedia is in fact fine, but that the foundation uses this messaging to more effectively drive donations. It makes them angry to hear it.

davidgerard• 12 years ago

http://newslines.org/about-newslines/

"We are the only direct competitor to Wikipedia ..."

akolbe• 12 years ago

The simple story is that the Wikimedia Foundation staff has massively expanded over the past six or seven years; both the revenue and their spending have risen exponentially (from 2 million in 2006/2007 to over $40 million in 2013/2014). Most of this increase in spending has funded the expansion of software engineering staff. It doesn't help that some of their flagship projects have been acknowledged failures (VisualEditor) or extremely controversial and divisive (Media Viewer, Flow). That's partly why Lila Tretikov was hired: to sort that mess out. And some spending was profligate, as Sue Gardner herself acknowledged, with gravy trains forming and supporting previously penniless Wikipedians. And as the spending increases, so of course the reserve has to increase too, to the point where there are now shooting for more than $50 million a year (compare to $5 million in 2007/2008).

The Foundation feel they have to expand because Wikipedia content is free, and is increasingly hosted elsewhere. Wikipedia could survive that, but the Wikimedia Foundation could not. Damon Sicore, the new VP of Engineering Tretikov hired, said the Foundation would have to

“scale to a size that enables us to compete with the engineering shops that are trying to kill us. That means we need to double down on recruiting top talent, and steal the engineers from the sources they use… because… well… they are REALLY GOOD. I want everyone to keep this in mind: If we don’t move faster and better than google, apple, and microsoft (and their ilk and kin), they will consume us and we will go away. It’s that simple.”

Now he may very well be right there. The problem with the current fundraising campaign though is that it tries to manipulate donors into donating, by making it sound there is a financial emergency and the Foundation can not afford to keep Wikipedia "online and ad-free for another year" without people donating. When in fact they have just reported having more money in the bank than ever before in their entire history.

That, and the obtrusiveness of the banners, is what is rubbing people the wrong way. You have long-term, committed Wikipedians now telling Wikimedia management that the campaign is deceptive, manipulative and damaging to the brand, and that they are ashamed to answer their friends and colleagues when they ask him about the financial problems of Wikipedia.

That discussion is here: http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/foundation/532701

Some quotes:

A Wikimedia staffer:

I agree that the urgency and alarm of the copy is not commensurate with my (admittedly limited) understanding of our financial situation. Could we run a survey that places the banner copy alongside a concise statement of the Foundation's financials, and which asks the respondent to indicate whether they regard the copy as misleading.

An ex-staffer:

The messaging being used is actively scaring people. This isn't the first person that's asked me about this. When they find out there's not a real problem, their reaction quickly changes. They become angry. They feel manipulated.

A Wikipedia admin:

Secondly I'm alarmed about the content. That should come to no surprise to the fundraising team, because I can't imagine this content hasn't been written to evoke the maximum amount of alarm. But it crosses the line towards dishonesty. Yes the WMF can use the donations, and yes they generally spend it well. But the lights won't go off next week if You don't donate.

A Wikipedia admin, and past president of Wikimedia Australia:

Lila, the concern is not that the fundraiser is working, which your soundbite confirms, but that it is deceiving people, or at least manipulating them 'too much' to be consistent with our values.

Ex-Wikimedia staffer:

You have a community that's upset because they believe the fundraising banners are causing long-lasting harm to Wikimedia's brand.

Stop giving Wikipedia money

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